'There is Only One Planet': The Bemusing Claims of London's Climate Warriors

22 Sep 2014

LONDON, United Kingdom – Piles of discarded placards in the streets are now all that remain of the festival of feel-good, eco-warrioring that was yesterday’s People’s Climate March in central London.

Apparently blissfully unaware of their hypocrisy, marchers have left placards emblazoned with complaints about the government and environmental issues strewn around on the pavement. The thousands of left-wing activists who descended shouting and stomping through London’s streets no doubt moved on to bars, restaurants or their homes to smugly congratulate themselves on having done their bit for Mother Nature, unsurprisingly not only expecting other people to pay for everything they demand, but also to clean up the mess they invariably leave in their wake after such gatherings.

The scene of the London demonstration itself was one of shouting, singing, dancing, music and fancy dress, with the carnival atmosphere clearly reflecting the merry, love-filled aura in which such activists love to shroud themselves. Many attendees wore face paint or dressed as animals, and a large number of very young children were brought along by relatives to take part in a politically-charged campaign no doubt explained to them beforehand in terms of a nightmare-inducing apocalyptic vision of their future with a few mentions of polar bears thrown in for good measure.

The standard placards being waved featured the words “For the love of [SPACE] Let’s do something about climate change”. The handwritten contributions to the blank space ranged from “Coal” and “Everything” to “Pingu” and “Syria (and snow leopards)”. One man cycled along the road on a bike bearing a large banner on poles reading “Love Your Mum” with cartoon images of a sickly looking planet Earth with a thermometer in its mouth. Other placards bore emotive slogans about the necessity of protecting the Earth, with some signs reading “We can’t live on Mars”, “There is no Planet B” and, perhaps most puzzlingly, one declaring “There is only one planet”.

In between passionate shouts of love for nature and hatred of all politicians, the air was filled with whooping, chanting, howling and roaring, with some demonstrators even bringing their dogs along and encouraging them to bark along with the raucous noise, congratulating their canine friends with adoring outbursts of “Good boy, yeah, you tell ’em.”

A passer-by was seen berating the attendees about the huge use of electricity in the demonstration, to which one marcher bellowed in desperate response “No, I am using my lungs” and refused to comment on the actual sum of money and amount of electricity being used. When it was pointed out by the same passer-by that trees were chopped down to make the placards and signs being so enthusiastically waved around, the marcher raised his voice even louder to irritably and sarcastically roar, “Oh, thank you for pointing that out, that’s VERY helpful.”

Vivienne Westwood drew huge cheers from the crowd during her speech, in which she denounced political parties as all the same, and asked for a cheer in response from all who agreed that wind farms are so much “more beautiful” than alternatives. She then closed her speech by saying,

“What’s good for the environment is good for the economy, what’s bad for the environment is bad for the economy and what’s good for the planet and the economy is good for people, and what’s good for people is the way out of our difficulties. Thank you.”

Alice Hooker-Stroud, a spokeswoman for the “Zero Carbon Britain” project at the Centre for Alternative Technology, addressed the crowd to speak about how “our current efforts to tackle climate change are not enough” and her grim view of the future into which we are heading.

Opening her address, she declared “I used to work in climate science so I’ve spent quite a long time looking at exactly what that future looks like and quite frankly it’s just depressing. I don’t even want to talk about it, let alone live in it.”

London’s march coincided with other such events around the world, including in New York, where British Conservative MP Greg Barker appears to have flown halfway across the world to demonstrate against climate change. Perhaps the irony was lost on him.